


signs & wonders

by robinauts



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: 2018 Penumbra Holiday Exchange, Gen, M/M, rita is cool. nureyev is lovelorn. juno has been junonapped!, this isn't about the s2 mid season finale. it's in a narrative grey area
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 09:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13338474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robinauts/pseuds/robinauts
Summary: Juno has gone missing. Rita is searching for him. Unexpected help shows up on her doorstep.Rita and the unexpected help eat a lot of takeout food together.





	signs & wonders

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MoonlitMusings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonlitMusings/gifts).



> This is my gift for [BriWhoSaysNi](https://briwhosaysni.tumblr.com/), who requested "Jupeter, but Rita's friendship with Juno and/or Peter would also be awesome." and "I like hurt/comfort and fluff. Aside from that, do what you will."
> 
> This takes place in a... handwavey spot, timeline-wise. This assumes that Juno returns to Hyperion City after wandering off in the desert. I don't actually expect Kevin will return to the status quo in the way I have, but fanfiction is built off of grey areas in the narrative. Maybe this will get an AU tag in the future.
> 
> Sorry about the WIP. I was able to write less over winter break than I was anticipating, but I will do my best to complete the second chapter by the end of January! Maybe you can interpret that as getting two presents to unwrap? But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Title is from The Only Thing by Sufjan Stevens (specifically the live version).

There’s nothing for it: Juno has dropped off the face of Mars.

And that’s not to say that he’s on some other planet or moon or satellite; Rita has scoured the security footage of each and every shuttle station in Hyperion City, on Mars, in the entire solar system - and she can’t find any glimpse of his scowling face or the narrow set of his shoulders or his slouchy walk that Rita has come to memorize after five years of watching him stumble into the office with an absent grumble of _morning, Rita_ -

Well. To be frank, she’s up the wall with worry. And when Rita’s worried about Mr. Steel, she gets serious.

The last trace she has of him is in Olympus Mons, pursuing a lead on a case for this fussy businessman who Juno didn’t especially like but offered a big reward. Rita had gotten Juno to promise a birthday bonus for her as he walked out (or rather, she mentioned it and he told her no, but he always ends up doing it anyway) for the last time, and then he’d taken the shuttle over to the city, and the surveillance system there was different than what Rita was used to (can’t they standardize these things, jeez) and then he went down an alley following a suspicious shrouded figure and she lost him on the cameras and that’s when his comms shorted out and the last thing she’d heard was Juno shouting _Rita! --_

And then static.

She’s tried calling the mayor’s office. No dice, not after Juno blew up at Mr. O’Flaherty three months ago when he’d arrived back in Hyperion City. She’s pretty certain Mr. O'Flaherty isn't involved, since he's focused on domestic affairs and has emailed her a couple of times to make sure Juno’s doing okay with the glass eye, and he seems like a nice enough guy, and besides some of the kinda-shady stuff she’s been hearing on the forums for _Growing Up Neptunian_ she can’t imagine why Juno’s opinion has changed so drastically (he never tells her _anything)_ , so it probably isn’t him. But he won’t expend resources to help.

She’s tried contacting Alessandra Strong, and she went over to Olympus Mons for Rita and scouted around, but all she could find was Juno’s coat. She’d dropped it on Rita’s desk, face clenched and worried, and then she’d said _I can’t imagine this helps your state of mind. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more._ And then Rita had grinned at her, trying her best to hide her shaking hands in the action of folding up Juno’s coat, but when she’d said _it’s okay, Ms. Strong, it’s - it’s better than nothin’!_ she hadn’t been able to hide the wobble in her voice. Ms. Strong had looked at her, so sad, and then she told her that if she heard anything else she’d let Rita know. And maybe if Rita’s lonely, she’d be happy to have her over for dinner with her and her fiancee sometime. But then she’d gone back into deep cover for a case with the Ganymedan government, and Rita hasn’t heard from her since.

She’s even tried calling the HCPD, and she probably could’ve expected the cackling down the phoneline. Even with a couple of the high profile crooked cops behind bars, most of them still hate Juno’s guts for a bunch of reasons. Even when she’d gotten Head Officer Khan on the line, he’d been gruff (and then really panicked when she’d started crying) but apologetic. Said he couldn’t do anything, his hands were all tied, said he’d give her the numbers of some friends in the OMPD that she could call. But those numbers had been for pretty low rank people, and the trail had gone cold - Ms. Strong had already given her the single piece of evidence.

She sent Mick Mercury poking around Old Town for her, but he’s turned up nothing. Valles Vicky went underground ever since Mayor O’Flaherty came into office, said she’d come back from her “second honeymoon” once things settled down, got back to normal. Ms. Wire from Dark Matters was a pain in the rear end to get ahold of after the last time, and even then she was about to hang up until Rita squeaked out _Mistah Steel’s missing, ma’am!_ Ms. Wire had paused, and then said _Juno throws himself into trouble day-in and day-out. I’m sure he’ll be alright. I won’t devote Dark Matters resources to it, but…_ (here her voice had gotten just a little bit gentler) _… if I hear anything, I’ll let you know._ And then she’d hung up and blocked Rita’s number again.

She doesn’t know where else to turn. She’s spent most of the last nearly-a-month at her desk, staring into screens, on fruitless phone calls, trying not to cry. Frannie’s been trying to message her, and for a while she sent back quick _ttyl_ s, but lately she’s just been swiping away the notifications. She’s even missed an episode of _Grey’s Anatomy In Space._ Juno’s disappeared before - twice before - and it never gets any easier. Every time feels like it’s the last, that Juno’s finally gotten himself - oh, she can’t even _think_ it, it’s too horrible.

And the worst part is, at least for Rita, this has gotta be worse for Juno - this is her fault. If she’d been better at the Olympus Mons cameras, if she’d been more helpful, if she’d done her job like he relies on her to, Juno might be okay and safe and _home,_ not… lost.

There’s a ping on the office comms. She scrubs her hand over her cheeks, and goes to delete what’s probably another cashgrab from the millions of spam addresses that fill up Juno’s inbox.

Except it’s not.

The name is the kind that makes Rita think that it’s the offer of a case that she’ll have to turn down until Juno gets back (until, not if): _Hadrian Lilium._ She opens it anyway - maybe it’s something easy that Detective Rita can take care of with her set of skills, make sure the office rent and her paycheck can get paid for - and reads.

_The delightful Ms. Rita -_

_You seem to have misplaced your detective._

_I have reason to believe that I am the only avenue you have remaining that is willing or able to help you._

_I do not wish any harm on Detective Steel. Our interests align._

_I will be in Hyperion City this evening. If you so wish, I will be at your doorstep, beck, and call._

_If not: I do hope you succeed on your own. I can only help with your help._

 

  * __HL__



 

It’s suspicious. It’s downright fishy. It might be from the people who kidnapped Juno in the first place, trying to get her too.

She glances at the clock. It’s three in the afternoon.

It might be a trap. It might be the Kanagawas, or the mayor, or a pissed criminal, looking to take down Steel Investigation Agency once and for all.

The office is so empty. She’s so worried. She’s terrified and exhausted and desperate.

She bites her lip, and starts typing a reply.

Nine times out of ten, Juno’s gut instinct keeps him alive by the end of the day. Today, the extra tenth can be made up by hers.

-

At 5:30 PM, there’s a brisk rapping on the office door, and Rita almost runs to grab it and swing it open, the blaster she keeps in her bottom drawer in her other hand.

The face is one she finds she recognizes, and _definitely_ isn’t one she was expecting.

Rex Glass. The Dark Matters agent who wasn’t and the guy that stole that mask thing. Juno was real broody after it all went down - she never got the full story about that out of him, but she’s thinking that she probably should have. He’d been really weird all last year.

Rex Glass clears his throat. Rita realizes she’s standing there speechless, mouth a tad agape, blaster still pointing at him.

“I imagine you were not expecting to see me again,” Rex says carefully. He’s not wearing those big sunglasses. His eyes are much more gentle than she would’ve thought they’d be a year ago.

She’s stuttering and stumbling out of shock. “You’re - you’re Rex...”

She stops for half a moment, lets her brain catch up with her memory. The way Juno’s shoulders had taken a moment to jump when she’d mentioned that name, his distracted mutter of _yeah, him,_ the way the slick secret agent she remembers is so palpably different from the stiff, tense figure in front of her. She settles on, “You’re… not Rex Glass.”

The man shakes his head, dark eyes trained on her, steady, piercing, measuring.

“And you’re not Hadrian Lilium either, huh.”

He shrugs one shoulder. It’s a sinuous, practiced movement. “For our purposes, I am.”

“How - how’d you know to come here?”

“I keep an eye on Dark Matters communications. Especially ones that connect to this little office.”

“Why?”

“I have my reasons.” He doesn’t go on, even when Rita gives him her best inquiring glare.

“... that’s all I’m gonna get, huh.”

“You could ‘get’ more if you _really_ wanted to, I’m sure, but I think your powers of research are best used for a different purpose at present.”

Right. Juno. Rita jerks her mind away from the mystery. “I guess so, Mister Lilium, but when we get him back, just you wait!”

She moves out of the doorway, and he glides in, steps rolling silently with practiced ease, glancing around the little dingy reception area.

“If you get him back hale and whole, Ms. Rita, I’d give you all of Mars if I wasn’t sure that if you wanted it, you’d have it already. And... just Hadrian is fine.”

His gaze falls on the door to Juno’s dark, empty office. He doesn’t let a lot away, Hadrian For-Our-Purposes Lilium, but the longing near bleeds from him.

That’s something Rita can understand, and she decides she can put the blaster down for now.

-

They settle down to work. Rita drags out the comfier guest chair from Juno’s office, and Hadrian makes a weird face when he sees it, but sits himself down and pulls out a laptop on the other side of Rita’s desk. After that, they don’t venture into the other room: Rita’s already gotten all the potentially useful papers, and without Juno it feels weird to go in there. Every time she looks at the door she catches herself thinking that everything’s normal, that Juno’s in there and about to shout at her to turn her programs down. The one time she catches Hadrian looking at it, his face looks about to crumple into itself, and if he cries she knows she will too. So she asks him if he wants his last egg roll, and he jolts back into his normal face, and pushes it towards her before burying his head in his work.

Hadrian picks up the bills for takeout, batting away Rita’s protests with ease. Since it’s probably all stolen money, Rita figures it’s fine.

Her first thought is that it's weird. Rex Glass had been fun and flirtatious with both her and Juno (she’d heard him through the wall that separates her desk from Juno’s and fairly often over the comms, lilting voice teasing Juno and Juno being grumpy back and oh, she misses him), but Hadrian Lilium is, above all, _focused._ He stays on his side of the desk. He’s perfectly polite to her, but they both know why they’re there. As she continues her searches and hacking, he combs through websites even Rita’s never heard of before _(and probably shouldn’t,_ Hadrian tells her when she asks) and occasionally calls her attention to potential leads that he emails on to her.

He falls asleep after her and wake up before her, and only for a handful of hours at a time. He curls up in his chair, one hand on his blaster, bundled up in Juno’s coat.

She’d given the coat to him the first night because he’d been rubbing at his arms all pathetic (she’d been keeping the office heater off because there was no income to pay the heating bill until Juno came back, so the room is like a meat locker). She felt bad, and she was already wearing her spare cardigan, so she’d offered the coat.

Hadrian had taken it carefully, looking at the red Martian dust stains and frayed hem with wide eyes, and had murmured a _thank you, Rita_ before slowly wrapping himself in it. Rita’s pretty sure he would’ve cried or smelled it or something if he’d been alone, but with her there, he just looked very lost. She’d just barely managed to hold in her questions, and every morning since she’s woken up to Hadrian hard at work, coat carefully folded on top of his briefcase.

A lot of his time is spent making calls where he speaks in languages Rita can’t identify. Some of them sound like pidgins and she can pick up a word or phrase here and there; others are completely and utterly foreign to her. With each call, his cadence and pitch change, and his posture does too. His shoulders rise, his shoulders fall, his legs cross, his legs extend at what must be an uncomfortable angle; at one point he undoes his ponytail and starts playing with some of the locks that hang in his face. And he makes all these _faces._ It’s super cool, and _fascinating_ to watch.

Rita idly thinks he’d be a good actor, but watching him flip through the deck of smiles he pulls his mouth into... she gets the feeling that this is something other than acting. From then on she’s kind of unsettled by all the selves Hadrian puts on and discards like so many jackets.

He’s still fun to watch though.

One of his calls has him loping around the office, leaning on every surface he can. Rita does her best to keep her focus on a Charonian banker’s emails, but she’s really bad at focusing and Hadrian is way more interesting than increasingly irrelevant white collar crime. At one point he leans on a file cabinet, hand twirling around as he talks in clipped, guttural sounds, and then when he turns his head in her direction he falters for half a second, shoulders falling, before he slips back into his persona, closing his eyes.

Rita looks to where he was looking. It’s the photo projection on her desk of her and Juno at a street fair two years ago. A few minutes before Frannie took the photo Rita had accidentally gotten her cotton candy stuck in Juno’s hair, and there’s still a bit of pink fluff up by his ear. He’d protested when Frannie had whipped out her comms, saying _I’m not gonna pose for a god damn photo, get that thing out of my face,_ but in the photo he’s got one corner of his mouth up, and his eyes are smiling. Rita doesn’t have many photos of Juno smiling (she doesn’t think anyone does), which is why this one is up on her desk.

She looks back up at Hadrian. His comms call is over. He’s looking at the picture again, face uncharacteristically still. He looks as lost as she probably does. Their eyes meet.

Rita tries her best to give him an understanding, encouraging smile. Hadrian gives her a smile back, and if she’s gonna be honest? It’s not the most believable thing in the world. Hadrian looks tired, mostly. He looks kind of old, like Juno does on his Bad-with-a-capital-B days.

But after days of watching Hadrian be a hundred different people, she’s fairly sure that means it’s sincere.

-

It’s nine in the evening, and Rita’s eyes hurt from staring at her screens for days on end. Hadrian is flipping through the office takeout menus while he mutters something into his comms, squinting at combos and two-for-one deals. Rita watches him and his slippery fingers just to look at something _else_ for a moment while some files download.

Hadrian selects a menu, scans it quickly, quirks an eyebrow, and tosses it Rita’s way. She just barely manages to catch it. It’s the Mercurian place down the block. She quietly orders her and Juno’s usual, exchanging hellos and small talk with Betta, the girl who’s always manning the comms there.

When she says goodbye, Hadrian is also done with his call and is looking at her with a little smirk. “So… who’s Ms. Betta?”

Rita doesn’t blush. She _doesn’t._ Okay, maybe she does a little. “She’s cute, is who she is.”

Hadrian tosses his head back and laughs. “Oh? Is that all she is?”

They’re both exhausted. They’ve been thinking about nothing but Juno’s absence for the past week, and it’s tiring, and it hurts. Rita always tells Juno to take a break once in a while, and it’s no good to be a hypocrite. She’ll talk about Betta.

In the ten minutes before their food arrives, Rita tells the tale of the dramatic shoot-out that took place on the roof of the Mercurian place a year ago and how Rita bounced on her heels by the car, straining to hear Juno’s cool one-liners amidst all the blaster bolts. Betta’d run out in a panic and stood next to her and they’d started chatting, and Betta was a real good conversationalist, and Rita had gotten totally distracted from the case until Juno had landed on the hood and shouted at her to _go go go!_ Rita had of course taken the time to link her comms with Betta’s, even as Juno growled her name and scary-sounding feet had clattered down the fire escape towards them. They’d saved the day (duh) and Betta’s made sure to give her a discount ever since.

The delivery person isn’t Betta, unfortunately, but there’s an extra samosa in the carton, and Hadrian raises an eyebrow.

“Free food has the exchange value of half a dinner date, just so you know.”

“Oh? You’re a romance mathologist?” Rita says, dipping her extra samosa in sauce. “Thought you was a sneaky guy for a living, sneakin’ around and being suspicious. Instead you’re doing heart fractions!”

“Oh, nothing so learned,” Hadrian says, flapping a hand. “I’ve never been to university, although I have posed as a professor numerous times. Amazing what you can convince people of with thick-lensed glasses and a self-assured tone. No, I just think it’s nice that even in Hyperion City, love can bloom.”

Rita shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know about love. Maybe a date or two. Some smoochin’. I’m a busy gal, Hadrian.”

Hadrian looks like he just restrained a fond eye roll. “Oh, you detectives,” he mutters. “All the same. How gauche.”

“It fits genre conventions if we’re love ‘em and leave ‘em types!” Rita says. “Y’know, ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am!’” She giggles, very self-satisfied. She’s wanted to use that turn of phrase ever since she heard it in one of her programs. Juno thinks up his one-liners; Rita steals a lot of hers from the streams. That’s why he’s the boss.

Hadrian smiles, but he doesn’t laugh along, and Rita suddenly feels… uncomfortable. Like she crossed a line on ground she didn’t even know she was approaching.

Then she thinks about Juno after the mask thing happened. And then after that thing from last year when he came back with no eye. And then she looks up at Hadrian.

… oh.

“Hey, uh, Hadrian…” she ventures, setting her samosa down on her napkin. “Uh… were you and Juno… _you know…”_

Thankfully, Hadrian barks out a quick laugh. It isn’t a funny ha-ha laugh, but at least it’s a laugh and not him yelling. “Yes. For a brief moment, we were, as you put it, _you know.”_

The polite thing to do is not to pry, to not poke at a bruise that isn’t hers, to let alone what is most definitely not her business.

… but technically, she works at Steel Detective Agency. Her rent is paid by prying. And Juno isn’t here to yell at her, so whatever.

“What happened?” she says. “Did - oh my god. _What did Juno do.”_

Hadrian snorts. “Juno did many things. I won’t bore you with the details, but to put it succinctly: Juno and I collaborated on two or so cases. The whole affair was a very harrowing experience that, at times, was… _emotionally fraught.”_ He says that last bit very particularly. “He affected me in a way I haven’t been before. Really, I was ready to drop everything and elope, like the end of a ridiculous movie. He has a... singular influence on me. Makes me behave entirely out of character.”

“I did a lot of things I never do, all for the sake of that woman. And he.” Hadrian stops, purses his lips and closes his eyes. Then he continues, “To put it simply, Juno left me.”

He tries to say it cleanly, as if he's over it. It hurts to listen to.

“... yeah, Mr. Steel does that,” she murmurs, fiddling with her sleeves. “He's always come back, but. It still hurts to watch him throw you away like that. Throw himself away, y’know. He’s always real eager to do that.”

Hadrian gives a horrible wet chuckle that Rita understands all too well. She wonders what Hadrian is thinking of. She's got five terrible memories of her own off the top of her head. “Yes. Yes, he certainly is.”

“But you search for him. You wait for him. Because he won't do it, because he doesn't think he deserves it, but he does. You gotta drag him back kickin’ and screamin’, because if you don't, he'll…”

Rita doesn't want to finish that sentence, so she lets it trail off. She tries her best to keep that train of thought out of her mind, like the memory of finding her Aunt Susie in the basement and screaming for her dads to come down quick, because she was a funny blue color. In the present, there's a loose thread in her sweater, and she has to resist the compulsion to unravel it. The food is growing cold on the table. Juno is missing.

She takes a deep breath, and brushes away all the worst case scenarios she's ever thought up over the years she's known Juno. She goes back to her normal voice, because she can do that. She can make her voice happy if nothing else. “Which is why it's great that you're helping me out this time around! I always say, confrontin’ the mortality of your friends is always easier with friends!”

Hadrian looks at her. If she was Juno, she’d probably describe it in a real clever, heart-wrenching way. But she’s not. He just looks like he’s thinking, and he looks sort of sad. He usually looks sort of sad, but this is different.

Then his shoulders relax, and he smiles and says, “You are absolutely right, Rita. There’s nowhere I’d rather be than this office, and nobody I’d trust more with helping Juno stay safe.”

He glances at the photo on her desk again, and his eyes crinkle.

“Now come: finish your half-of-a-dinner-date.”

-

And then, at 4 AM, while Rita is dozing at her desk, Hadrian leaning back against his chair wrapped in Juno’s coat, there’s an alert on her comms.

She startles awake, knocking a tchotchke to the floor, which wakes up Hadrian, whose hand twitches to his belt. She squints at her comms screen, and then gasps.

There’s no sender address. The message is in one of Dark Matters’ ciphers.

Sasha came through.

She decodes it as fast as she can, Hadrian leaning over her shoulder and muttering out bits and pieces as he figures them out, and soon they’ve got coordinates in front of them. They’ve got _something._

Rita wants to cheer, but from the look of dawning horror on Hadrian’s face she has the feeling that things aren’t fixed: just worse.

**Author's Note:**

> And in the second half... the rescue. And the promised h/c.
> 
> Thanks to [Orin](https://zasunati.tumblr.com/) and [Charlie](https://bardboyfriend.tumblr.com/) for looking this over for me! Especially the former, as he hasn't listened to Penumbra but still has an eye for syntax and is very kind to me. What a lad.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at [flovvright](http://flovvright.tumblr.com)! Thanks for reading!


End file.
